A Rainbow of Circles Necklace

Rainbow activities are awesome for learning colors, but we added another learning element by making this a sort by size activity as well!

This one took a little prep work by me. I think you could include a preschooler in part of the prep, if you were to prep the prep work.

What I did before I called the boys. Actually, I got them excited for the activity but then remembered I had to prep this one first, so they sat in front of the television to watch a quick show. Yep. That’s me.

So I dug out the scrap pieces of paper from the Rainbow Scavenger Hunt in all the rainbow colors. I traced one of the kids’ cups to get started with the largest circle, red. I cut that out, twice, to make a set for each boy.

I then, very quickly, traced that onto the orange paper and cut that out, just slightly smaller all the way around. I did this over and over with all the colors of the rainbow, making each circle slightly smaller than the last. I completely free handed that and did it quickly, so my circles aren’t very good and actually do look like my kids cut it.

If you wanted to prep that part, just draw circles on all the colors of paper so that each one is slightly smaller than the last in the order of the rainbow. Then have your kids cut out the circles. While I knew Henry could cut them out, I also knew it would take him absolutely forever to do seven circles. And I knew that George wouldn’t last that long for an activity. So maybe another day.

So with two set of colored circles already cut, I called the boys.

I quickly mixed up each set of circles in front of them and had the boys sort the circles by size from largest to smallest.

I had to laugh at George’s arrangement. He had them all messed up. But he pretended he knew what he was doing and lined them all up in a row. Just not in the right order. A great conversation starter for learning sizes.

Henry sorted them by size quickly and then started paper punching each circle. This is a great hand strengthening tool and he actually surprised me this time by being able to punch all the way through the paper. (I punched George’s circles.)

Once again after the papers were punched, I had them sort the circles again by size. For Henry sorting by size is mostly a review, for George its a completely new concept. So making this a size activity was fun to see how fast they grow and learn!

And then they threaded the circles onto a string. So that’s hole punching and threading, we’re knocking out the fine motor skills with this activity!

And that’s it! Tie it around their necks and its a pretty necklace!

Or if you’re like my boys, they’ll wear it around for a little bit and show it off, but then hang it up on a door knob, or the fireplace and its now a rainbow decoration!